WI the Central Intelligence Agency had the legal opportunities to operate on United States soil? Would this change any of history, perhaps leading to better federal domestic policing? Or would it go the other way--that is, being a really bad idea?

Also, what would be some things we could tweak about the CIA operating inside the USA to make it more interesting? For example, WI they didn't have any arrest powers? Would that significantly change anything?

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Originally Posted by chris N

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American MI-5 like set up in the CIA, probably very political in nature compared to the rest of the Agency. Involvement in Conservitive affairs is possible. Prehaps avoiding a Watergate like incident, by taking care of smeer campaigns for the conservitive party themselfs, or prehaps causeing a bigger one by being caught doing it.

I think the FBI and its intelligence division probably counts. If you make the FBI more muscular, enough to keep military intelligence out of the domestic intelligence game, then you might be able to do it.

The thing I've always seen as murky is the difference between intelligence divisions in police forces that serve to track criminals and their networks, and domestic intelligence agencies that are suppose to prevent . . . what? Crime I would say. In a sprawling government like the United States you're going to have overlap in this kind of work. If you look at anti-communist programs for instance, everyone, the FBI, the US Army, state police departments, all had intelligence agencies actively involved in anti-communist activities.

So you want to unify all domestic intelligence under a single heading? I would say you need to have Congress spell out what this domestic intelligence agency's job is, and then spell out that all other federal agencies are not allowed to get involved in this stuff. OTL what you saw was mission creep, as military intelligence and foreign intelligence began to get peripherally involved in domestic intellgence, and steadily increase this involvement.

Here's a better one: what if the cowboys of the OSS operated on American soil?

Now that one I like.

Hmm, well a major showdown between Hoover and FDR for one, if he gives the OSS the go-ahead. I don't think Hoover wins,

Could this improve the OSS's chances of surviving? It's harder for Truman to kill them if they're also deeply involved in domestic intelligence and letting the OSS continue instead of forming the CIA later… all kinds of awesome things may happen.

I wonder if it might have been actually better if the CIA had been a subdivision of the FBI, still tasked with foreign intelligence operations, but they'd be able to interact a lot better with the FBI, share info, etc. The CIA and FBI overlap somewhat in investigating foreign intelligence operations inside the country, and having one subordinate to the other might improve things...